Samuel C.C. Ting

Facts

Affiliation at the time of the award: Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), Cambridge, MA, USA

Prize motivation: "for their pioneering work in the discovery of a heavy elementary particle of a new kind."

Prize share: 1/2

Work

By about 1970, a large number of elementary particles had been identified. Most of these comprised two or three quarks. Using high-energy particle collisions and independently of one another, in 1974 both Samuel Ting and Burton Richter, independently of each other, discovered a new heavy particle, known as J/psi, proving experimentally the existence of a fourth quark, later named "charm".

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